Featured Map for 21 September 2015:Delta's 777 Flying

Delta Air Lines flies two different
types of Boeing 777-200. The 18 aircraft share a common cabin configuration:

37 Delta One™ business-class seats

36 Delta Comfort+™ seats (economy with 35-inch pitch)

218 Main Cabin seats

The specifications and capabilities of the aircraft are quite different, though:

Model

MGTOW(lbs)

MZFW(lbs)

Range(nm)

Engines

Delivered

777-232ER

656,000

430,000

7,423

RR Trent 892

7 in 1999, 1 in 2002

777-232LR

766,000

461,000

9,016

GE GE90-110B1

10 in 2008-2010

As might be expected, the longer-range 777-200LR is used on the two longest
missions, from Atlanta to
Johannesburg and Dubai.
Besides distance, the return flights on these routes are challenging due to
high field elevation at JNB and high density altitude at DXB due to heat,
compounded by prevailing headwinds.

Delta also uses the 777-200LR on their third-longest 777 route, from
Los Angeles to Sydney.
United uses the 777-200ER on this
route, with exactly the same number of seats though different engines.
Delta may use the 777-200LR to gain greater belly-cargo lift, or simply
because there are enough shorter missions to fully use Delta's 777-200ER fleet.

Curiously, Delta's shortest 777 mission at just
971 nm,
from Tokyo to Shanghai,
also uses the 777-200LR. This peculiarity can be explained by two observations.
First, all seven of Delta's NRT arrivals are schedule to arrive between about
2:45 pm and 3:25 pm,
with the departing bank between
4:25 pm and 5:30 pm.
This schedule has NRT-LAX arriving
late morning, with the return departing a bit after noon.
Second, LAX-SYD departs 11.5
hours after the arrival of the NRT-LAX flight, which would result in an
excessive dwell time if the same aircraft were used for both flights.
By instead using the 777-200LR to fly
NRT-PVG-LAX
Delta gets better utilization of the airframe, and may benefit a bit
from greater cargo lift out of PVG.

The 777-200ER flying is much simpler: all out-and-back from NRT except
for one, the flight from
New York to Tel Aviv.
The schedule has one aircraft on the ground at Minneapolis-St. Paul
for over 23 hours but this time is likely used for routine maintenance
such as an A check. Other than these two trips all of the
777-200ER round-trips from Tokyo are short enough to be accomplished
within the ~22 hours between banks.

Information on this site may not be accurate or current and is not valid for flight planning or navigation. No warranty of fitness for any purpose is made or implied. Flight planning and navigation should only be done using official charts.